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BANCROFT 
LIBRARY 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


The  Constitutionalist  Government 
Confronted  with  the  Sanitary  and 
Educational  Problems  of  Mexico 


Address  Delivered  by 

ALBERTO  J.  PANI,  C.  E. 

to  the  members  of  the 

American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science 

and  of  the 

Pennsylvania  Arbitration  and  Peace  Society 

in 

"WITHERSPOON  HALL,"  PHILADELPHIA,  PA.,  U.  S.  A. 

on 

Friday  Evening,  November  10th,  1916 


Terminal  Pump  Building,  "Water  TVorks,  Mexico 
City.  General  Director:  Manuel  Marroquin  y 
Rivera,   C.   E.   Arcliitect,   Alberto   J.    Pani,   C.   E. 

Published  by 

LATIN-AMERICAN  NEWS  ASSOCIATION 
1400  Broadway,  New  York  City 


Does  Mexico  Interest  You? 

Then  you  should  read  the  following  pamphlets: 

What  the  Catholic  Church  Has  Done  for  Mexico,  by  Doctor. 

Paganel    >    $0.10 

The  Agrarian  Law  of  Yucatan j 

The  Labor  Law  of  Yucatan 

International  Labor  Forum ;.••,*•«; ^ 

Intervene  in  Mexico,  Not  to  Make,  but  to  End  War,  urges  (       q  ^5 

Mr.  Hearst,  with  reply  by  Rolland. ) 

The  President's  Mexican  Policy,  by  F.  K.  Lane 

The  Religious  Question  in  Mexico |^ 

A  Reconstructive  Policy  in  Mexico r       "-a" 

Manifest  Destiny ^ 

What  of  Mexico )       ^.^ 

Speech  of  General  Alvarado • t      "-a" 

Many   Mexican   Problems • ^ 

Charges  Against  the   Diaz  Administration | 

Carranza    (      "•^" 

Stupenduous  Issues    ' 

Minister  of  the  Catholic  Cult ) 

Star  of  Hope  for  Mexico (      "-a" 

Land   Question  in   Mexico ^ 

Open  Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  Chicago,  111.  ( 

How  We  Robbed  Mexico  in  1848,  by  Robert  H.  Howe /      0.10 

What  the  Mexican  Conference  Really  Means ' 

The  Economic  Future  of  Mexico 

We  also  mail  any  of  these  pamphlets  upon  receipt  of  5c  each. 

Address  all  communications  to 

LATIN-AMERICAN  NEWS  ASSOCIATION 
1400  Broadway,  New  York  City 


THE  CONSTITUTIONALIST  GOVERNMENT  CONFRONT- 
ED WITH  THE  SANITARY  AND  EDUCATIONAL 
PROBLEMS   OF  MEXICO. 


Mr.  Chairman: 

Members  of  the  Academy  and  of  the  Pennsylvania  Arbitra- 
tion and  Peace  Society: 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen : — 

During  the  most  acute  and  violent  period  of  an  Armed 
Revolution — a  veritable  chaos  in  which  it  would  seem  that 
the  people,  after  destroying  everything  try  to  commit  sui- 
cide in  a  body — the  news  of  isolated  cases  however  hor- 
rible they  may  be,  cease  to  cause  a  deep  impression,  be- 
fore the  awfulness  of  the  general  catastrophe.  As  the 
struggle  reaches  some  form  of  organization  by  the  group- 
ing of  men  around  the  various  nuclei  representing  the  an- 
tagonistic principles  in  action,  individuals  grow  in  import- 
ance until  the  nucleus  which  best  interpreted  the  ambitions 
and  wants  of  the  people  acquires  absolute  ascendancy. 
Then,  this  group  is  unreasonably  expected  to  strictly  fulfill 
all  the  obligations  usually  incumbent  upon  a  Government 
duly  constituted.  The  sensation  then  provoked  by  the  news 
of  isolated  cases  of  misfortunes  suffered  by  individuals, 
because  of  their  very  rarity,  cause  greater  consternation. 

This  is  precisely  what  is  occurring  with  the  present  Mexi- 
can Government.  Take  any  two  dates  from  the  beginning 
of  its  organization.  Compare  dispassionately  the  relative 
conditions  of  national  life,  and  it  will  be  necessary  to  admit 
that  the  country  is  rapidly  returning  to  normal  political 
and  social  conditions.  It  is  also  undeniable  that  the  tem- 
porary interruption  of  a  line  of  communication,  or  the 
attack  on  a  train  or  village  by  rebels  or  outlaws,  now 
causes  an  exaggerated  impression,  people  forgetting  that 
not  so  long  ago,  the  greater  part  of  the  railway  lines,  or 
the  cities  of  the  Republic  were  in  the  hands  of  said  rebels 
or  outlaws,  and  that  in  the  ver>^  territory  dominated  by 
the  Constitutionalist  Government,  trains  and  towos  were 
but  too  frequently  assaulted. 


But  it  is  inconceivable  to  try  to  make  the  present  Govern- 
ment responsible  for  the  transgressions  of  its  predecessors. 
The  Revolution  itself  is  a  natural  consequence  of  these 
faults.  Former  Governments  who  knew  not  how  to  pre- 
vent the  Revolution,  are  responsible  for  the  evils  which 
it  may  have  brought  in  its  train;  and  should  the  Nation 
be  saved,  as  it  shall  be,  it  will  be  due  solely  to  the  citizens 
who  have  been  willing  to  sacrifice  themselves.  In  truth 
it  is  only  through  personal  sacrifices  that  it  is  possible 
to  construct  a  true  fatherland. 

The  enemies  of  the  new  Regime — irreconcilable  because 
they  will  not  accept  the  sacrifices  imposed — are  now  burn- 
ing their  last  cartridges,  making  the  Constitutionalist 
Government  responsible  for  many  of  the  calamities  which 
caused  the  Revolution,  and  which  the  Government,  im- 
pelled by  the  generous  impulse  which  generated  it,  pur- 
poses to  remedy.  Thvis  do  we  explain  the  protests  of  the 
discontented,  and  the  monstrosity  that  said  protests  are 
even  more  energetic  and  louder  when  they  defend  money 
than  when  they  defend  life  itself. 

The  theme  of  this  night's  address  refers  to  one  of  these 
calamities,  a  shameful  legacy  of  the  past.  Inimical  interests 
are  trying  to  attack  the  Constitutionalist  Government  on 
this  score,  though  it  is  the  first  Government  in  Mexico  which 
has  tried  to  remedy  this  evil.  Having  been  appointed  by 
the  First  Chief  in  charge  of  the  Executive  Power  of  Mex- 
ico, Mr.  Carranza,  to  make  the  study  of  the  problem,  I 
would  only  have  to  summarize  or  copy  some  fragments 
of  the  corresponding  Report,  in  order  to  develop  such 
a  theme. 

"One  of  the  most  imperative  obligations  that  civilization 
imposes  upon  the  State  is  to  duly  protect  human  life,  to 
permit  the  growth  of  society.  It  becomes  necessary  to 
make  known  the  precepts  of  private  Hygiene  and  to  put 
them  in  practice,  and  to  enforce  the  precepts  of  public 
Hygiene.  For  the  first,  there  is  the  school  as  an  excellent 
organ  of  propaganda.  For  the  second,  with  more  direct 
bearing  on  healthfulnes§,  there  are  principally  special  es- 
tablishments to  heal,  to  disinfect,  to  take  prophylactic 
measures.  Then  there  are  engineering  works,  laws  and 
regulations  put  in  force  by  a  technical  personnel,  or  by 
an  administrative  or  police  corps.  It  may  therefore  be 
said  without  exaggerating,  that  there  is  a  necessary  rela- 
tion of  direct  proportion  between  the  sum  of  civilization 
acquired  by  a  country,  and  the  degree  of  perfection  attained 
by  its  sanitary  organization.** 

The  activities,  in  this  respect,  of  General  Diaz'  Govern- 
ment, during  the  thirty  odd  years  of  enforced  peace  and 
of  apparent  material  well-being,  were  devoted  almost  ex- 


clusively  to  works  to  gratify  the  love  of  ostentation  or 
speculation.  Seldom  were  they  devoted  to  the  true  needs 
of  the  country.  There  were  erected  magnificent  build- 
ings. To  build  the  National  Theatre  and  Capitol,  both  un- 
finished, it  was  planned  to  spend  sixty  millions  of  pesos. 
When  it  was  a  case  of  executing  works  of  public  utility, 
their  construction  was  made  subservient  to  the  illicit  ends 
pointed  out.  Thus  for  example  the  works  of  city  improve- 
ment, never  finished,  not  even  in  the  Capital,  in  spite  of  the 
conditions  of  notorious  unhealthfulness  of  some  important 
towns,  were  always  begun  with  elegant  and  costly  asphalt 
pavements,  which  it  became  necessary  to  destroy  and  re- 
place, whenever  a  water  or  drainage  pipe  had  to  be  laid. 
The  work  of  education  undertaken  by  the  Government  was 
chiefly  dedicated  to  erecting  costly  buildings  for  schools: 
it  is  only  in  this  way,  therefore,  that  we  can  realize  that 
the  proportion  of  persons  knowing  how  to  read  and  write 
is  barely  30%  of  the  total  population  in  the  Republic. 

The  net  result  of  what  was  done  in  these  respects  dur- 
ing the  long  administration  of  General  Diaz  could  not  be 
more  disastrous.  If  we  take  the  average  of  mortality  for 
the  nine  years  from  1904  to  1912,  the  heyday  of  that  ad- 
ministration, we  find  that  in  Mexico  City,  where  the  great- 
est sum  of  culture  and  material  progress  is  to  be  found, 
there  is  a  rate  of  mortality  of  ^2.3  deaths  for  each  one 
thousand  inhabitants.    That  is  to  say: 

I. — It  is  nearly  three  times  that  prevailing  in  American 
cities  of  similar  density  (16.1) ; 

II. — Nearly  two  and  one  half  times  larger  than  the  average 
coefficient  of  mortality  of  comparable  European  cities 
(17.53)  and 

III. — Greater  than  the  coefficient  or  mortality  of  the  Asiatic 
and  African  cities  of  Madras  and  Cairo  (39.51  and  40.15, 
respectively)  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  the  former,  cholera 
morbus  is  epidemic. 

The  annual  average,  corresponding  to  the  same  period, 
of  deaths  in  the  City  of  Mexico  due  to  avoidable  disease, 
if  proper  care  for  private  and  public  Hygiene  be  taken — 
and  arraignment  against  the  administration  of  General 
Diaz — reaches  more  than  11,500  deaths.  Now  as  the  deaths 
occasioned  by  the  Revolution  during  the  six  years  surely 
do  not  reach  70,000,  then  we  find  that  the  Government  of 
General  Diaz — so  greatly  eulogized — in  the  midst  of  peace 
and  prosperity,  did  not  kill  fewer  people  than  a  formidable 
Revolution  which  set  afire  the  whole  Republic,  and  horri- 
fied the  whole  world. 

But  the  truth  is  that  General  Diaz'  Government  did  not 
recognize  the  formula  of  integral  progress— the  only  one 
which  truly  ennobles  Humanity — and  wasted  its  energies 


in  showy  manifestations  of  a  progress  purely  material  and 
ficticious,  within  the  inevitable  train  of  vice  and  corrup- 
tion. The  ostentatious  pageant — the  most  shameless  lie 
with  which  it  has  ever  been  attempted  to  deceive  the  world 
— which  celebrated  the  anniversary  of  National  Independ- 
ence, took  place  exactly  a  few  weeks  prior  to  the  Popular 
Revolution  of  1910,  before  whose  onrush  the  Government 
fell  like  a  house  of  cards. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  Constitutionalist  Government. 
In  its  banner  it  has  written  the  resolve  to  better  the  condi- 
tion of  life  of  the  people,  socially  and  individually,  and  its 
sincerity  and  energy  may  be  seen  not  only  in  the  words 
but  in  deeds. 

The  Constitutionalist  Government  during  its  sojourn  at 
Vera  Cruz  at  the  close  of  1914  and  the  beginning  and 
middle  of  1915,  while  the  Army  reconquered  the  territory 
of  the  Republic,  at  first  almost  wholly  in  the  hands  of  the 
enemy,  in  spite  of  being  engaged  in  the  most  active  cam- 
paign in  the  annals  of  Mexican  History,  still  found  time 
to  take  up  the  efficient  political  and  administrative  reor- 
ganization of  the  country. 

"Whoever  may  know  something  of  our  History,  and  may 
view  with  impartiality  the  long  and  complicated  process 
of  the  formation  of  our  nationality,  from  the  pre-Cortes 
period — through  the  troublous  time  of  the  Conquest,  colo- 
nial days  under  the  viceroys,  the  wars  of  Independence, 
the  convulsions  only  calmed  by  the  iron  hand  of  Diaz,  of 
nearly  one  century  of  autonomous  existence — until  our  own 
time — will  be  bound  to  discover  in  the  salient  manifesta- 
tions of  the  life  of  the  national  organism,  the  unequivocal 
symptoms  and  stygmata  of  a  serious  pathological  state, 
brought  about  by  two  principal  agents:  the  loathsome  cor- 
ruption of  the  upper  classes,  and  the  inconscience  and 
wretchedness  of  the  lower." 

"The  iniquitous  means  used  by  Don  Porfirio  Diaz  to 
impose  peace,  during  more  than  thirty  years,  not  only  an- 
nulled all  efforts  tending  to  remedy  the  evils  discussed,  but 
rather  determined  their  greater  intensity.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  satisfied  the  omnivorous  appetites  of  his  friends 
and  satellites;  it  crushed  and  caused  the  criminal  disap- 
pearance of  whomever  failed  to  render  tribute  or  bow  to 
his  will;  it  fostered  cowards  and  sycophants,  repressing 
systematically  and  with  an  iron  hand,  every  impulse  of 
manliness  and  truth.  It  placed  the  administration  of  jus- 
tice at  the  unconditional  disposal  of  the  rich,  paying  not 
the  slightest  heed  to  the  lamentations  of  the  poor.  In  a 
word  it  increased  the  immorality  and  corruption  of  the 
small  and  privileged  ruling  class  and  increased  in  conse- 
quence the  sufferings  of  the  immense  majprity,  grovelling 

6 


in  ignorance  and  hunger.  Therefore,  the  thirty  or  more 
years  of  praetorian  peace,  but  served  to  deepen  still  further 
the  secular  chasm  of  hatred  and  rancor  separating  the 
two  classes  mentioned,  and  to  provoke  necessarily  and 
fatally  the  social  convulsion,  begun  in  1910,  and  which  has 
shaken  the  whole  country." 

"The  three  aspects  of  the  problem  which  I  have  presented 
— the  economic,  intellectual  and  moral — coincide  with  the 
purposes  of  education  through  schools,  as  ideally  dreamed 
of  by  thinkers,  that  is  as  'institutions  whose  object  is  to 
guide  and  control  the  formation  of  habits  to  realize  the 
highest  social  good.'  But  our  schools,  unfortunately,  have 
not  yet  acquired  the  necessary  strength  to  assuage  in  an 
appreciable  degree,  the  horrible  ambient  immorality,  or  to 
counterweigh  its  inevitable  effects  of  social  dissolution." 

''The  true  problem  of  Mexico  consists  therefore  in  hygi- 
enizing  the  population  physically  and  morally,  and  in  en- 
deavoring to  find  through  all  means  available,  an  improve- 
ment in  the  precarious  economical  situation  of  our  prole- 
tariatr 

"The  part  of  the  solution  of  the  problem  which  corresponds 
to  the  Department  of  Education  or  to  the  Municipalities,  must 
be  realized,  establishing  and  maintaining  the  greatest  pos- 
sible number  of  schools,  to  do  which,  their  cost  must  be 
reduced  by  means  of  a  rational  simplification  of  organiza- 
tion and  of  school  programs.  This  must  be  done  without 
losing  sight  of  the  fact  that  its  preferential  orientations 
should  be  marked  by:  the  character  essentially  technologi- 
cal of  the  teaching,  to  co-operate  with  all  the  other  organs 
of  the  Government,  in  the  work  of  economical  improve- 
ment of  the  masses,  and  through  the  diffusion  of  the  ele- 
mental principles  of  hygiene,  as  an  efficient  protection  for 
the  race." 

"And  finally,  as  the  medium  does  constitute  an  educa- 
tional factor  more  powerful  than  the  schools  themselves, 
the  country  must,  before  and  above  all,  organize  its  pub- 
lic administration  upon  a  basis  of  absolute  morality.'* 

To  come  to  a  conclusion,  restricting  myself  to  the  purpose 
of  this  address,  it  will  suffice  to  say:  that  when  the  Con- 
stitutionalist Government  ruled  but  an  insignificant  portion 
of  the  country  there  w^ere  yet  sent  to  the  principal  centres 
of  culture  of  the  United  States  several  hundred  teachers  to 
investigate  and  secure  data  to  reform  school  matters  in  Mex- 
ico. This  was  done  at  a  time  when  dollars  were  of  great 
importance  for  the  purchase  of  war  material. 

Subsequently,  in  spite  of  the  countless  obstacles  which 
seemed  to  obstruct  every  step  of  the  Government,  the  num- 
ber of  schools  has  been  greatly  increased.    It  is  now  much 


greater  than  it  was  before  the  Revolution:  in  some  States 
it  has  been  doubled.  Besides  there  have  been  effected  im- 
portant works  of  city  improvement  in  Mexico,  Saltillo, 
Queretaro,  Vera  Cruz,  etc.,  and  the  mouth  of  the  Panuco 
River  is  about  to  be  dredged.  It  has  been  specified  in  the 
respective  contract  that  the  soil  taken  out  is  to  be  used  to 
till  in  the  marshy  zone  around  Tampico,  thus  eliminating 
the  chief  cause  of  this  city's  unhealthfulness. 

In  short,  in  order  that  the  Government  which  has  arisen 
from  the  Constitutionalist  Revolution  may  realize  its  pro- 
gram of  public  betterment,  which  implies  the  physical  and 
moral  hygienizing  of  Mexico,  it  is  only  necessary  to  give 
it  time.  Only  some  magic  art  could  transform  in  a  moment 
a  group  of  human  beings  into  an  angel  choir,  or  a  piece 
of  land  into  a  Paradise. 

Philadelphia,  Penn.,  November  10,  1916. 

A.  J.  Pani. 


